


A Little Rest For The Wounds

by calapine



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:34:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23486899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calapine/pseuds/calapine
Summary: A Doctor, a werewolf, a house in Brazil.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Ileana de Santos
Kudos: 1





	A Little Rest For The Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in 2006. Ileana de Santos is a character in the fifth Doctor Big Finish audio Loups Garoux.

A meeting.

“I’m sorry…I was so sure…”

She shakes her head, and makes to retreat, but the stranger holds her eyes and he smiles.

“Hello, Ileana,” he says.

“It _is_ you.” For a moment, wonder, then the hardness returns to her voice. “But that’s impossible.” She tilts her head, a challenge. “How?”

The Doctor shrugs. “How do you change from human to wolf? That’s just the way I am. I change too.”

“Yes, I can see that. Your shadow is far longer than it was before. You are much older, Doctor.”

“Older and wiser?” he asks with a half-smile, as though it could be a joke.

“No," she says. "I think not.”

They walk through the marketplace as ghosts. Sounds and people drift from them as smoke from the wind. Ileana sets an easy pace, and an easy silence. The Doctor is content to watch the activity swirling around them, all the scents and colours seem so far away from their isolated route.

"May I ask what you're doing in Brazil?" says Ileana as they wind their way through quieter streets. She's leading the way back to her house, her home, and he has accepted her silent invitation.

"Just in the neighbourhood...thought I'd pop in, catch up...you know."

"I see." Ileana is quiet a moment, thinking about the questions she wants to ask, and the questions she shouldn't ask. "Are you staying long?"

"A few days. Didn't get much of a chance to see the sites last time I was here."

"There are few attractions for the tourists these days, Doctor."

"I came to see you," he says quickly, as though afraid of the admission.

"Only to leave me again?"

"Ileana, that's not fair."

She nods. "You are right, Doctor, it is not. I am bound to the earth, and you cannot help but fly. And yet here you are. It is not fair at all."

"I didn't...how's your son?"

"Victor is well. He went north many decades ago, I do not see him so often as I would like." She stops, reaching out a hand to brush his arm. He turns to look at her and she offers him her hand. "Run with me, Doctor."

-

In her bed, he forgets, if only for an instant, who she is.

On his back, her nails are claws are nails are claws. Her humanity is fleeting as lust takes her and he catches the phantom of the wolf. Indistinct to his senses, she is a primal force that should repel him, frighten him. It is her life, he knows, given in blood and violence and endured in linear year after linear year.

Her tongue rasps against his skin. He gasps as her teeth scrape against his neck, sharp, delicate. They don't break the skin; they could so easily crush his throat.

Killer, he thinks, trying not to think at all. She has eaten human flesh. Hunted, killed, feasted. She should be a monster, but she knows her sins. Repents.

He can still be merciful. Still be a hypocrite.

Ileana is on top of him. Fucking him. Vicious, desperate. Her skin, hot and flushed.

The setting is all wrong. The house, a cage. Claustrophobic.

His fingers reach up to trace the line of her jaw and he does not know if his hands skim flesh or fur. For a moment, he dares to meet her eyes and they flash yellow. For a moment, she is someone else.

He is a coward, he closes his eyes.

She is still too strong to be human.

-

"I believed that I loved you once. That was foolish of me."

He asks anyway, almost shyly. A child, seeking reassurance. "And now?"

"Now I would still go with you, even if it meant my death." 

"Ileana..." He shakes his head. "I can't do that."

"If I wished to go with you, I would go." She smiles, a flash of teeth. "But I accept what I am, Doctor."

"Doesn't it ever frighten you?" he asks.

"Fear," she says, "is for prey."


End file.
